Frankenstein

By:
Ross Camidge

By Mary Shelley

First published 1818

Try to put all images of crackling Van de Graaff generators and lumbering, moaning, bolt necked monsters from your mind. Nearly 200 years of oversimplification and spoofs have completely overshadowed the original version of this tale. So let's set the record straight. While still a student of natural philosophy Victor Frankenstein had an epiphany. Through studying death and decay he discovers “the cause of generation and life,” becoming himself “capable of bestowing animation on lifeless matter.” Although now this would probably first be demonstrated on nematodes, then drosophila, Frankenstein goes straight for the big one: creating a man. And although the raw materials for the project were derived from “the dissecting room and the slaughter house”-this is about creation, not reanimation. To avoid fiddly surgery he builds the creature on a massive scale, some 8 feet (2.4 m) in height. Frankenstein is initially just